On behalf of Pastor Mark and Grace Driscoll, we want to thank you for listening to this series based on the book of First Corinthians titled Good News for Bad Christians.

In this series from 2007, Pastor Mark is taking us on a 33-week journey through First Corinthians verse by verse.

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Thank you again and enjoy this message from First Corinthians.

Father God, we start by acknowledging and celebrating the fact that there is one God that you are God, that you are God, that you are loving God, that you are a good God, and that you are mindful of us.

And we thank you for sending the Lord Jesus to live without sin, to die, to rise, to minister to us.

And Jesus, we thank you for sending the Holy Spirit to make us Christians, to empower us for new life, to gift us for ministry and service.

And so as we study tonight, we ask you Holy Spirit to come and minister to us, to reveal to us Jesus so that we might do ministry like he did that glorifies God to Father.

We ask this Lord Jesus in your good name. Amen.

Well, as we get into it, to catch you up if you are new, I will start by telling you about Jesus and then we will go right into the text.

And so here is what we believe, according to the teaching of the Bible, that there is one God who made this earth and made us, male and female, gave us this earth to steward and to enjoy.

And we disobeyed God, we sinned. The result of sin is separation from God and death.

God knew that we were in this terrible mess for what we had done. And so God in his great compassion came into human history as the man Jesus Christ.

And he lived a life without sin and he did ministry throughout the course of his life. And you see repeatedly, particularly in places like Luke's Gospel, where God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, work in close tandem together so that it is the Holy Spirit who enables Jesus' mother, though she is a virgin, to conceive and birth him.

We see that at his baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and were told throughout the Gospel of Luke that Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit and filled by the Holy Spirit and guided and empowered and enabled by the Holy Spirit to do ministry.

So he taught, encouraged, administrative, preached, all the ministry that he did was by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus then died for our sins and rose. He appeared for 40 days proving that he had indeed conquered sin and death. And then he ascended back into heaven where he is alive and well today. And then he sent the Holy Spirit.

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